Essay on Boyhood

I am standing at the lip of the ocean, watching

the first layer of fog clings and lifts from the earth.

In each other’s arms, boys practice case-making.

in the courts of their fathers, say, I love you, I love you,

I like the sand in your hair and the voices steaming in the cold.

They say a person can craft anything out of language.

Someone, write a poem in which this tense isn’t crafted.

in mine.  They say it’s once in a lifetime you can kiss.

something and, at last, make it human. Give me two.

of these lifetimes. I’ll kiss my hands into a cathedral.

of all they have touched—

the flour on your thumbprint the night we tried

to make the dough rise in the oven, we are so human.

The boys wave their legs over cliffs, kiss,

and make the rising fog into an unpracticed language.

I am thinking, only now at the lip.

of the ocean, about the shape of your mouth—

open and gathering our lives in years

of hunger and bread. Years of soles

sinking through sand, digging holes

so deep that two lifetimes could fit in them.

I am thinking, only now, about writing that house.

you’ve always wanted, somewhere in San Francisco

and with a porch so close to the beach, we could make

a living from all the washed-up rubble.

Somewhere, all this has already been kissed.

and collected.  Here, we are proof of everything.

So much lip, so much rise.